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Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Tyler Lapic

I got the opportunity to watch 1991 born sophomore forward Tyler Lapic play. Lapic is considered one of the better 1991 birthdates in the country.

When I saw him this past summer, I noted that he looked like he had recently grown and was still adjusting to his body. He looked a little more adjusted to his size last night. He's a fairly tall kid. They didn't list his height, but I would guess around 6'1" or 6'2". He looks really thin though, and could probably had a lot of strength.(Not that that is at all unusual for a kid his age. In fact, it's pretty rare that a kid that young wouldn't need to gain a lot of strength.)

Even if he didn't look particularly strong, the thing that impressed me the most with Lapic was his ability to control the puck. He reminded me a lot of Travis Morin in the way that he doesn't look particularly strong, but is incredibly difficult to knock off the puck because he does such a nice job of using his body to protect the puck.

He also displayed some pretty soft hands. His skating ability was decent, but could probably improve. I think that will come along once his legs get a little stronger. His positioning in the offensive zone was excellent. He did a great job of moving around the offensive zone, and created a couple goals off a nice cycle. I thought he could have used his teammates a little bit early on in the game, but he's leading his team in assists, so maybe that was just an anomaly.

Overall, he's a pretty solid player and one of the best 1991 birthdates in the state. I wouldn't put him ahead of the very best players like Zach Budish, Tyler Pitlick, or Nate Schmidt, but he's definitely in the next grouping. He still has a ways to go before he's ready to start getting scholarship offers, but I think he probably will be by the time he's a senior in high school.